The California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP), founded by Sanford Forte, began as a private/public undertaking promote use of California State K-12 Standards to develop printed and eBook versions of open source textbooks that will be approved for adoption by California's State Board of Education for use in California public schools at far less cost than current commercial textbook offerings - thus helping the State of California save money ($200M+ per year) while providing more robust content for its public schools.

The COSTP World History Project on Wikibooks is a placeholder pilot that helped prove Open-licensed textbooks as a viable concept in K-12 education. The COSTP World History Project proved successful in helping California education officials understand the value of the open source content approach applied to K-12 textbooks.

At this point in time, (October, 2010) the World History Project takes on the role of "historical document", in that as a very early promotional tool - even in an incomplete state - it succeeded in helping educators and policy makers understand how a textbook could be collaboratively built on the web, by collaborators - in a way that would gain acceptance by educators and policy makers.

Please note: Wikibooks hosts another textbook on World History based on Advanced Placement Standards for World History. Although a worthy project in its own right, the AP World History project is not related to the California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP). COSTP is dedicated to writing content that strictly adheres to the California State Education framework for K-12 content in all disciplines - in this case, World History.

In order for open source books to pass peer review (and thus approval for public school adoption) at the California State Board level (this is also true in most other states), textbook content *must* conform to the written state K-12 education framework standard - this is a sine qua non for adoption, no exceptions are made. California's State Board of Education would thus *not* approve the above AP World History project for general adoption because it does not conform to California's K-12 World History standard. This is an important distinction between the two projects. Private institutions, some state education bureaucracies, and independent learners might want to choose the AP World History course for their own specific purposes, but adoption by California public schools for widespread baseline World History K-12 education would not be permitted or considered for the reasons stated.